Donegal SW – General Notes….

As mentioned in the previous entry, politics.ie had a scoop yesterday, releasing the RedC/Paddy Power poll in Donegal SW some hours before any mainstream media outlet. Aside from the By-election polling, the poll gave the voting intentions for a GE, which amounted to 31% SF, 25% FG, 19% FF, 18% LP and 7% OTH. This would almost certainly produce 1 seat each for SF, LP and FG, with Mary Coughlan losing out.

I was curious as to how this compared with the spreadsheet’s projections.

The most recent spreadsheet projection for RedC was posted on 26 October here

Obviously, aside from national swings, there is also the effect that having an actual election has on the electorate (and of course, any shortcomings in the spreadsheet). These would suggest that the local campaigning, the recent bank/bailout controversy, and possibly the Gerry Adams announcement hit FF badly to the benefit of Doherty and McBrearty. Either that or the spreadsheet is overstating FF, and understating LP and SF, which would confuse some posters on p.ie who are arguing that it’s biased in the opposite direction…..

There’s word of a (national) RedC poll being published at the weekend, it will be interesting to see if a similar trend manifests in that. if it does, I’d expect FF in the low-to-mid teens, LP pushing 30% and SF in early double figures. If not, these figures are probably largely a result of the by-election/goldfish bowl effect.

This could be just the sort of place where FF by running one candidate would be well assured of a seat even with the party down to low 20%s or worse nationally but that by running two they would not get one at all. And with such a divided local organisation it’s hard to see them running just the one.

That’s a very important point I think. FF running at so much lower than their usual vote means that they’ll have difficulties persuading local parties to run the optimum number of candidates, when at less than half their previous levels of support.

Of course, it’s always possible that they’ll recover somewhat, but even a 10% increase on current (national) levels leaves them running 2nd candidates in places where they’re not sure of 1 seat.

I still think Coughlan will limp home, mind, but it’s not a foregone conclusion….